Advertisement

Related Content

The Hymn to Ninkasi is at once a song of praise to Ninkasi, the Sumerian goddess of beer, and an ancient recipe for brewing. Written down around 1800 BCE, the hymn is no doubt much older. Evidence for brewing beer in the Mesopotamian region dates back to 3500-3100 BCE at the Sumerian settlement of Godin Tepe in modern-day Iran where, in 1992, archaeologists... [continue reading]

This gate was built at the northern side of the city of Babylon by the king Nebuchadnezzar II in 575 BCE. It was the eighth gate into the city of Babylon, Mesopotamia (modern Babil Governorate, Iraq). The gate was built with glazed bricks and decorated with alternating rows of bas-reliefs of aurochs (representing the god Adad) and dragons (also known... [continue reading]

In April of 2003, the Iraq Museum in Baghdad was looted of over fifteen thousand priceless artifacts. In only two days, from the 10th to the 12th of April, historical artifacts from ancient Sumerian cities like Uruk, Ur, and Eridu, as well as pieces from Babylon, the Akkadian Empire, and Nineveh, were lost or destroyed. The looters were native to the region... [continue reading]

The Ludlul-Bel-Nimeqi is a Babylonian poem which chronicles the lament of a good man suffering undeservedly. Also known as `The Poem of the Righteous Sufferer', the title translates as "I will praise the Lord of Wisdom". In the poem, Tabu-utul-Bel, age 52, an official of the city of Nippur, cries out that he has been afflicted... [continue reading]

The gods of the Mesopotamian region were by no means uniform in name, power, provenance or status in the hierarchy. Mesopotamian culture varied from region to region, from city-state to city-state and, because of this, Marduk should not be regarded as King of the Gods in the same way Zeus ruled in Greece. While Marduk was venerated highly in Babylon... [continue reading]

The reign of Assyrian king Sennacherib (705-681 BCE) was chiefly characterized by his difficulties with Babylon. Throughout the history of the Assyrian Empire, Babylon had caused problems and had even been destroyed by the Assyrian king Tukulti-Ninurta I in c. 1225 BCE. Even so, there were direct cultural bonds between Babylon and Ashur, capital of the Assyrian... [continue reading]

The Myth of Adapa (also known as Adapa and the Food of Life) is the Mesopotamian story of the Fall of Man in that it explains why human beings are mortal. The god of wisdom, Ea, creates the first man, Adapa, and endows him with great intelligence and wisdom but not with immortality, and when immortality is offered Adapa by the great god Anu, Ea tricks... [continue reading]

The Royal Game of Ur, as exhibited in the British Museum, London. Early Dynastic III, about 2600 BC.
Game boards of this type were found in at least six royal graves at Ur. They are made of wood, inlaid with carnelian, shell, and lapis lazuli (which was the most precious mineral at the time).
This game was played all across the Ancient Near East for about 3000 years.

The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World were: the Great Pyramid at Giza, Egypt the Hanging Gardens of Babylon the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, Greece the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus the Colossus of Rhodes the Lighthouse at Alexandria, Egypt The Seven Wonders were first defined as “themata&rdquo... [continue reading]